2017-03-16

Celebrating 30 years of the Canon EOS System

This month (March 2017), Canon celebrate a milestone in their history, celebrating the 30th Anniversary of the EOS system.

For many years prior to 1987, Canon released several highly popular 35mm cameras, with a wide-range of FD lenses. For 1987, Canon choose to completely overhaul their system and launched the world’s first fully electronic mount system, which is now commonplace across all cameras and manufacturers.

On Wednesday 8th March, we were invited by Canon to a secret location in the heart of London to help celebrate this milestone. The location; Aldwych Tube Station. Closed in 1994, Aldwych tube station was originally opened in 1907 and during the second world war used an air raid shelter as well as storage for a range of art and treasures from the British Museum. In recent years, the station has been used as a popular location to shoot scenes for film or TV series, most recently Mr. Selfridge and Sherlock.

Upon arriving at the station, we were greeted by every EOS camera that Canon have produced in their 30-year history. Products included the very first EOS with the EOS 650, the first Digital SLR produced in collaboration with Kodak (which looks enormous when you compare it against the flagship mirrorless camera in the Canon line-up; the EOS M5), the EOS 300D which brought Digital SLR cameras to a much broader market, and the much-loved Canon EOS 5 series including the latest EOS 5D Mark IV.

Once we had received a quick safety briefing from Transport from London, we were split into separate groups and guided round the station starting with the ticket hall and the original lifts. Although the telephones had left their booths, you could still imagine the hustle and bustle of business people or day-trippers walking through the hall to catch their train or have the need to call a loved one.

Sadly the lifts were no longer in operation, and there are no escalators like you’ll find at most underground stations today, so it was time to descend 130 steps to the platform level! Here we were greeted by a London Underground train, and another model to help us envisage what travelling by underground in the early 20th Century might have been like.

After this was a chance to walk down the corridor to an inter-connecting platform where a number of old posters / adverts were on display to view and to do some light painting in a dis-used tunnel.

At some point the evening had to come to an end, but Canon continued the retro theme as we took a London Routemaster to a local bar, where there was not only the chance to once again see the history of EOS all on one table, but to also see the legendary EF 1200mm f/5.6 L USM lens (click here for a short history on this lens – recently seen at Park Cameras in Burgess Hill!